


Through a Glass, Darkly

by songofproserpine



Series: AkeShu: The Thing That Feels [1]
Category: Persona 5
Genre: Angst, Dissociation, M/M, Not Actually Unrequited Love, Touch-Starved
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-04-08
Updated: 2018-04-08
Packaged: 2018-10-24 23:48:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,254
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/10752294
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/songofproserpine/pseuds/songofproserpine
Summary: 'See that it's not true. See that I'm lying.''Don't. Please. Don't ever see what lies in me.' There is a sea in Akechi that swallows all, a push and pull, ebb and flow, constantly malicious and occasionally merciful undertow of thought and words that are too heavy for the head that holds them, too hard for the heart that buries them. Hearts are soft, blood and veins and pulp. And Amamiya-kun's eyes are too sharp, but he, Akechi, is so needy and weak. Weak for a cut that lets the air out, weak for a wound that will let the words flow fast, bright, free.





	Through a Glass, Darkly

"You don't look so good. How're you feeling?"  
  
Akechi watches his hand lower his coffee cup back to its saucer. The resulting sound is delicate, gentle, like stepping on a piece of glass and dragging it across concrete. He stays silent, but there are words in his head, words and words, fragments of larger thoughts he has to tear out of the heap to make any sense of.  
  
_It's like looking at a severed hand and asking it to make a fist._  
  
Stupid sentence. Stupid thought. Stupid words. You don't ask a hand to do anything--it's an appendage, a limb, an extension of a body, which is a machine for the mind. Every sinew a string to pull as the puppeteer may please. You are not your body--your body is yours to do with as you please. Just like a heart.  
  
But still, even so--that's how this feels. That's how _he_ feels, if non-feeling (unfeeling?) can be felt at all. This feeling, these words unraveled from a larger skein, these thoughts, are tumescent, swollen, heavy to bear and heavy-hearted to boot.  
  
_Answer him. He's standing there, he's looking at you. Sakura-san will turn back any second now and then he'll be staring at you too_. Akechi watched his fingers curl into a fist. He didn't feel it, didn't feel a thing except that swollen, suffocating emptiness. Too much air filling too much space. Too many words crowding in his head, demanding a place on his tongue.  
  
Tongue. Teeth. A mouth. He scrapes his teeth across his bottom lip--it's chapped, the skin warbled and ribbed. How long has he sat here in silence? How long had it been since he last spoke?  
  
_Turn and talk to him. You can't ignore him._ Akechi couldn't argue against that, although the truth made him raw and aching. _If you wanted to be alone, you would have gone back home. But you're here. You're still here. Turn and face him._  
  
A face. Dark eyes, cuttingly curious and quick. Not in wits, but in a different kind of wisdom. Sensitive, considerately suspicious. That's what Amamiya-kun is. His eyes are a magnet for the hidden, hateful things Akechi sets to rest from the moment he wakes up to the long hour he spends trying to fall asleep at night. Amamiya-kun's eyes are like knives, paring each person he sees down to their bitter, bared essential elements. Their weakness, their wounds, their neediness.  
  
It's just a simple question, posed by one friend to another ( _Friend? Is that what I can be?_ ), but the truth is rarely pure and never simple. And lies have to work just as hard not to be.  
  
Akechi pivots in his seat and smiles. He always shuts his eyes when he grins, and in his mind's eye he seems himself as through a glass, darkly. Like the _L'Inconnue de la Seine_ , his smile is but a death mask to display, so simpering and sweet. They should put it on display in galleries for the morbid and the cruel to fawn over, just as they did with the woman they dredged up from a watery death.

"I appreciate your concern, but it's really nothing," Akechi hears himself say. His voice doesn't belong to him. These words are not his own. They are not real--this moment, this smile, those tightly shut eyes and that small, jerking laugh that makes him shake, it's not him, it's not his. It's the strings at work again, plucking and pulling.  
  
The strings relax, and his smile falls. His eyes can open again, and with a lightning bright and knife sharp quickness he knows he's made a mistake. Looking Amamiya-kun in the eyes is ever and always a mistake. Not for what he sees, but for what Akechi wants him to see.  
  
_See that it's not true. See that I'm lying_.  
  
_Don't. Please. Don't ever see what lies in me._ There is a sea in Akechi that swallows all, a push and pull, ebb and flow, constantly malicious and occasionally merciful undertow of thought and words that are too heavy for the head that holds them, too hard for the heart that buries them. Hearts are soft, blood and veins and pulp. And Amamiya-kun's eyes are too sharp, but he, Akechi, is so needy and weak. Weak for a cut that lets the air out, weak for a wound that will let the words flow fast, bright, free.  
  
Amamiya-kun is quiet. Akechi sees the bag on his shoulder shift, and he knows the cat's inside. _Don't let him see me_. He can't take those eyes. Eyes as blue as a summer sky, unnatural and pristine. Akechi has nothing against cats. He has something against _this_ cat, because this cat stares at him for too long, unblinking, watchful--and just a little pitying.  
  
Akechi feels his head twist from side to side, shaking off the thought ( _You're getting too worked up_ ), shaking off the silence. He hears himself say, "I'm afraid I get lost in thought a lot. It's a bad habit, that's all."  
  
"You didn't look lost," Amamiya-kun says, his voice low.  
  
Akechi feels every muscle in him tense at the words, at the sound of them, at their force. He looks at the other boy's mouth, bitter sick with envy at the words _he_ can say and the weight they carry. _How does he do it? How can he do this to me?_ "Oh? So how did I look?" he hears himself ask.  
  
He watches as Amamiya-kun takes a quick look around Leblanc--there's only one other patron in the shop, and he's complaining to Sakura-san about something on the TV. Neither of them are looking this way. For the moment, he and Akechi have a small shard of privacy hidden in plain sight. Akechi watches again as Amamiya-kun does something unexpected, and then something unbelievable.

First, he hesitates. Then, he leans in, brushing his lips past Akechi's cheek as his mouth and his words spill into his ear.  
  
"You looked like you wanted to scream."  
  
Akechi feels Amamiya-kun's hand close slowly, finger by finger, around his shoulder. Feels it squeeze and press tight. The warmth from that touch has an instant effect, like fire tracing the lines of an oil spill. Akechi burns, he's warm, he feels, really feels, not that suffocating emptiness that fills him up with too much of nothings and never enoughs, but a warmth, a fire, a fine kind of fury with all heat and no ferocity.

 _How does he do it?_ He thinks again. _How can he do this to me?_  
  
"It's okay," Amamiya-kun continues, gently stroking Akechi's shoulder. "I'm here. I can hear you."  
  
Akechi feels the edge of his lips grazing his ear with every spoken word. He sits as still as stone, locking himself in that moment, in that private shard of warmth that the world will soon crack open and cast aside. Even for him, there can be moments of sunshine. No matter how blindingly bright. Right?  
  
Too soon, and also just soon enough, Amamiya-kun takes a step back and removes his hand. Just as he does so, Sakura-san turns from the TV, his disdain for the customer barely disguised. He looks down the counter at Akechi and offers a gruff, proprietary smile: thin, tight-lipped, stretching no further than a pinkie finger's nail. "Is there anything else I can get you?"  
  
Akechi's eyes never move from Amamiya-kun's as he says, "No, thank you. I got exactly what I needed."

**Author's Note:**

> 'Don't ever see what lies in me' -- Lies is kind of a pun here, meaning of course what "lurks" in him, and also don't see what lies (as in, tells a lie) inside him. I.e., that hidden, darker side of Akechi.


End file.
